" N EVER!" vowed Mr. Edmund Shaw- J ones. "Never shall our - daughter wed a poet!" Mrs. Shaw-Jones meekly concurred. Mr. Ed und Shaw-Jones was thus irate be- cause he was who he was; and if you don't know who he was, you don't know the list of boxholders at the Opera House, or the Directory of Directors, or the membership rolls of our best clubs. The Shaw- J oneses have been somebody ever since their ancestor bought half Long Island from the In- dians for a song and dance. (He even rnade the Indians provide the dance, under the stimulus of a keg of fire- water.) Almust as noble and opulent as the Shaw- J oneses are the Chubb- Cherwells. ( Mrs. Shaw-Jones was a Chubb-Cherwell.) So the Shaw- J oneses have always thought that the world is theirs, and the fulness thereof. They were not concerned in the writ- ing of the Declaration of Indepen- dence, the Constitution of the United States, or the Charter of Greater New York; they let who will write the laws of a nation so long as they can endorse its dividend cheques. They don't make money; they have money, they are money. They don't know what it is all about, but they haven't needed to for the past two hundred years. Miss Geraldine Shaw- Jones had been brought up in what is called the lap of luxury, as delicately nurtured as the legendary princess who was irked by the intrusive pea, even under seven featherbeds. She never dreamed- why should she?- that the spirit of America was about to change all that; that following the a bolition of poverty, accomplished in the first year of the Hoover administra- tion, the privilege of being upstage was about to be extended tothemasses. She had been taught that the will of a Sha w- Jones was law; and the possibility of the con- flict of the wills of two Shaw- J oneses did not cross her mind, till she came home and told her father that she 18 THE PR.INCES S, THE PEA, AND THE. AME.RICAN SPIRIT \vas engaged to a poet named Eric. f\ poet named Eric . . . "That," said her father furiously, "is what comes of letting her go to heavyweight fights, where you might meet anybody." "I didn't meet him at a heavyweight fight," said Geraldine. "I met him at Palm Beach." ""'There you might meet anybody," her father concluded. "Never, I say. He has no family, he has no money; he is nobody. Never!" Abashed by this thesaurus of nega- tives, Geraldine withdrew. Her par- ents heard no more of her till they returned that night from the opera, to he confronted with a telegralTI: "MARRIED ERIC AT PORT CHESTER. BE SPORTSMEN AND ASK us TO LUNCH TO- MORRO"\\T ." "Never!" said Mr. Shaw-Jones. "She> has made her bed; now let her lie in it. Already she asks for lunch! ,l\nd after that, logically, dinner. . . . Never!" Mr. Shaw-Jones repeated "\,\T e must cut her off, Cornelia. Pov- erty will bring her to her senses." "Cut her off?" Mrs. Shaw-Jones repeated. "Yes, Edmund," she con- curred meekly. "Poverty will bring her to her senses." Poverty. . . . Mrs. Shaw-Jones had never known anyone who had actually experienced poverty; but she could visualize it. An eight-room simplex; only two cars; visits from the Charity Organization Society. . . . Her husband was eyeing her shrewdly. "Cornelia, you begin to weaken. / I" U )J)J Ll ll ""., ....<, , ... . n _ _n , ,-1 i.-- ., C ,-----= ' ' ,-::-; ..., . - -- -'-._- ,,- : . ' N ' V:" i? ":"':""':::.,: ""<;"""'" _.' : (, ,/.' i: . , , \ 'fi:' : / l" ,,t ..,........ ÿÆi.. ...... -. j:/' . <..... ' "..<> "\J}il;:*':" . .", . i:.:.:- .. .. "17" eah , she called 1J1e up the day she got her i1zterlocutory degree." ...--........... O..sOc;'Ohl JANUARY +) 1 G) O Shaw- J oneses never weaken. I must take you away from these painful scenes. \Ve sha11 cruise around the world." Eric and Geraldine lunched on money he borrowed from a classmat he met in the \Villiams Club, while her paren ts set forth to cruise around the world. S IX months passed. The Shaw- J oneses cruised through tropic seas, they inspected age-old ruins; they heard no word from their only child. Then, in Soerabaja, Mrs. Shaw-Jones came upon an American magazine. She all but screanled as a portrait sprang out at her, from the midst of a full-page ad vertisemen t. Her child! . . . "Mrs. Eric "'Tilbraham ( the former Miss Geraldine Sha w- Jones) clothes her exquisite self in the delicate intimacies of Pulpo underwear . 'Never till I wore Pulpo,' says Mrs. Wilbraham-" Mrs. Shaw-Jones stared. There, in- deed, was the photographic evidence- her daughter, in a shop, examining a nightgown. . . . She rang; she bade the maid summon her secretary, Miss Simpkins, who knew everything. "Miss Simpkins," said Mrs. Shaw- Jones, "what is Pulpo underwear?" Miss Simpkins frowned. "It is," she said, "the sort of under- wear that is worn by the wives of men who wear the same shirt for three d " ays. Mrs. Shaw-Jones shuddered. So this was poverty. . . . But she controlled herself; come what might, she must keep this news from Edmund. At Alexandria, she came upon an- other American magazine. Another photograph of her child, imbedded in a full-page ad vertisemen t, screamed for her attention. "The lovely Mrs. Eric Wilbraham (formerly Miss GeraldinE Shaw- Jones) confides to ,l\merican women the secret of her allure. 'Never till I u ed Parfum Délire,' says Mrs. Wilbraham, 'did I understand how a scent might reveal the essence of a , 1 ., " woman s persona Ity- Again Miss Simpkins was sum- moned. ."Miss Simpkins, what is Parfum Dé- lire?" "Mrs. Shaw-Jones, must you dIs- tress yourself by probing in to the secret lives of the multitude? . . . It is sold in all Liggett drugstores, at twenty-five cents the flacon." Mrs. Shaw- Jones shuddered; and w hen her husband joined her, it was with difficulty that she could withhold